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Symbolism In The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost

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Robert Frost’s poem,”The Road not taken” was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1915 and included a year later in the little volume entitled Mountail Interval.It is among Frost’s best, most riveting, and most complex and is still quoted by inspirational speakers, writers, commercials, and everyday people. The poem is about making a decision when confronted with two possible choices. Life is not simple; a man is never faced with a choice that just has one narrow path. In “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost uses symbolism through nature to analyze one’s decision-making through life; and the narrator hopes that his choices will not haunt him for the rest of his life. In this paper, I would like to interpret the decision making analysis …show more content…

In 1914, when Frost and Thomas lived in Gloucestershire, they frequently took long strolls through the field. Thomas would pick the way which he thought may demonstrate his American companion an uncommon plant or any sort of exceptional hobby. Be that as it may, before the end of the walk, Thomas would lament the decision he made. He would "murmur" over his choice on the grounds that he thought he could have taken the "better" course. Frost would tease Thomas for each one of those second thoughts he would have.In a 1912 letter to susan Haves Ward, frost writes of “two lonely cross-roads” that he walked frequently during the winter.After a snowfall, he would observethe road lying trackless for days,showing that “neither is much traveled.”Frost goes on to describe how one evening he was surprised to see a figure in the distance walking towards him.Oddly, he felt he was approaching his own image in “ a slanted mirror,”or as if two images were about to “float together.”In the end, Frost writes,”I stood still in wonderment and let him pass by” (Selected Letter 45)That experience sheds substantial light upon the ambiguities that have perplexed readers of the poem.The road not taken “ dramatizes the narrator’s encounter with his own self. . On the other hand, Frost also referred to the poem merely as “my rather private jest” (Bassett …show more content…

The speaker is trying to decide why he should choose one road over the other. Ketterer believes that looking at the two roads from above, the forking road obviously resembles the letter “Y.” In the second stanza, there are no “I’s” which implies that there was perhaps a suspension of identity at the moment of choice. Ketterer also mentions that Frost includes five words which rhyme with “Y/ why,” including three “I’s” in the final stanza of the poem. The projected future “I” of this last stanza rationalizes the choice that he has made as his having “heroically” taken the “less traveled” road “And that has made all the difference” (Ketterer

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